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Don’t micromanage, don’t stress. A great number of people will wander off and have a fag in the garden, a few might be entranced, some people will consider this the greatest night of their life, many will be indifferent. You cannot control or influence this.
Be attentive to the turns without being over-indulgent. Class will out.

I did a similar thing for my 50th birthday in 2005. My hero Jackie Leven kindly agreed to perform for a very modest fee. I rented a couple of rooms above a local pub, borrowed a PA from a mate and corresponded with Jackie and his agent by email. The agent send me his standard rider specifying a very specific brand of vodka – which made Jackie laugh, and he didn’t touch it, sticking to whisky and beer during the gig. We drank it ourselves later. Jackie also kindly agreed to play a few specific obscure requests which he performed beautifully on the night.

Come the gig and Jackie was an absolute gent, putting up with my ineptness for the soundcheck and performed two wonderful sets for my (largely) attentive friends and family. I recorded it and torrented it on Dime.

Advice? I have none other than be absolutely respectful to Keith Christmas and just act normally. If you have invited anyone who might be, erm, “inattentive” (drunk), arrange for them to have another room available maybe or have a quiet word in advance… worth doing a bit of an intro for the performance perhaps. My intro for Jackie Leven was well over the top and concluded with the (stolen) words: “On your feet or on your knees – the transcendent Jackie Leven!!!!”

Hope it goes brilliantly. I’m sure it will. Let us all know how it goes. I last saw Keith Christmas in 1972 and he was fantastic then. I’m sure he is even better now.

At the risk of stating the obvious, keep your mate Keith insulated from everything except having a good time, it’s his day/night, try and keep any hassle out of his sight and just let him remember it as One Of The Best Nights Of His Life, he’ll thank you for it…

Have some sort of stage lighting – even a few lamps and the room lights turned off. I had a band who are now quite big and ended up turninig half the house lights off in the life saving club hall to create an “effect”. Pretty lame really.

Was beginning to wonder if I was the only one here who honestly has never heard of Keith Christmas. I refuse to Google. My best guess is he released an album in 1969 that made Nick Drake look like he was mainstream. I fully expect HP and Peter Gabriel were amongst his many fans. Saying all that I hope the night goes brilliantly…

I did see Mr Holidays at some point, and there was an album I heard, but he didn’t make that much of an impression at the time (about as much as early Nick Drake or Gary Farr, rather more than Bill Fay, less than Michael Chapman) But there were a lot of albums-only singer-songwriter acts back then, mostly playing support. It must have been a hard life, and I’m pleased to see that at least one of them is still out there driving his own Transit to gigs!

Neat summary. See also Mike Absalom. Keith has scattered a generous double handful of great songs, another bucketful of really good songs, and a lot of stuff that’s well worth hearing across several decades. There’s a brilliant 2 disc retrospective available, the name of which escapes me, that is well worth the investment.

I’m surprised you don’t know of him Steve.
I’m aware of him because I remember when I was at school a group of Genesis fans (I was never one of those) went to see them and a fair few of them were raving the next day about the support act, which was of course Mr C.
Given he was liked by the Genesis fans, I was discouraged from listening to him and don’t believe I ever knowingly have heard him.

Things started around 15:00 with a local folk trio, followed by some poetry readings. Freshly-made gumbo/tomato soup/curry was consumed, as was plenty of cider and local real ale (“Pushang”!).

Mr Christmas was on stage around 18:30, participating in q&a’s both before and after his very entertaining set. As it was still daylight, only minimal lighting was necessary. It seems he had a good time as well as the 50 or so attendees.